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This Sunday: Who Put the Fiction in My Nonfiction?

By Hugo Lindgren September 28, 2013 5:00 amSeptember 28, 2013 5:00 am

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Credit Gabrielle Plucknette/The New York Times

We do as much as we can here at The Times to avoid introducing made-up things into the world. So this Sunday’s magazine is quite a departure — the cover story is a work of fiction by Dave Eggers, an adaptation from his novel ‘‘The Circle,’’ which is to be published the week after next.

Putting fiction on the cover is, however, is a first for us, as far as we can tell, and it was the particular charm and power of Eggers’s book that convinced us to do it. His subject — a young woman who goes to work at an omnipotent technology company and gets sucked into a corporate culture that knows no distinction between work and life, public and private — is what could be described as “topical” or “timely,” though those pedestrian words do not nearly capture its imaginative vision. The line between satire and bracing details that feel all too real is one that readers will have to draw for themselves — and then debate it with their friends.

What ultimately persuaded to not just publish the adaptation but put it on the cover is more elemental than that. It’s simply a great story, with a fascinating protagonist, sharply drawn supporting characters and an exciting, unpredictable plot. I must say, it reawakened the occasional fantasies I have of moving my family to the woods and living off the land, though I know we’d last about a day out there. But as scary as the story’s implications will be to some readers, the reading experience is pure pleasure. I suspect that those who see aspects of their own fears in the story will enjoy it most of all.

Bruce Grierson wrote this week’s cover story about Ellen Langer, a Harvard psychologist who has conducted experiments that involve manipulating environments to turn back subjects’ perceptions of their own age.Read more…